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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Weekly Wrap-Up: Where the Trampoline Flies Away

Iron Man- Kindergarten

Iron Man and I took a little break over the last few weeks in regards to school work. Between VBS, my finals, and our annual trip to Georgia (see Legoland and Tybee Island to check out some the fun we had!) it was easier not to worry about doing any "school" work. Then last week I just needed a week to recover, so we took another week off.

Language Arts

We started using the free Progressive Phonics readers to review and build confidence. I've also noticed that Iron Man doesn't necessarily care about NEAT handwriting, so I've gone back to some pre-writing skills to encourage slowing down and writing neatly. We'll see how it goes.

History

I had plans to start 4th of July activities/readings during the second half of the week, but Iron Man got sick, so we took an abbreviated week. We still have the weekend and next week to do a few things though.

This week's regular history story was called William Penn and the Indians. It ended by talking about how William Penn played a particular game with the Native Americans, so that's how I led into our math activity.

Math
Another book we have has a section on Early Native Americans, and describes a game of luck they played. Since we don't have carved bone or antler, we of course adapted our playing pieces, but that was our math for that day.

We used 6 double sided counters as our playing pieces. He chose red. We put them in a cup, shook, and dumped them out. For every red chip, he earned one point. Then I took a turn, and for every yellow, I got one point. We did this about 5 times, and then calculated our points.

We used bingo markers for our "points" and Iron Man was the scorekeeper. He had to decide how many points each player received, and at the end of the game, he was responsible for counting them and comparing the totals. I noticed when they were in a pile, he had difficulty counting them, so we put them in a straight line. He used a Lego man to count them one by one, so as not to double count or skip any, and this was more effective. The first round I won 15 to 12, and the second round he won 14 to 11.

We're also still doing a lot of living and hands-on math. This week we played Candy Land, which is too easy to be considered even a review of any sort for Iron Man, but we're trying to teach Hulk the basics of board games. He could care less right now. Last night we also played Monopoly Town, which is a great introduction to the original with basic counting, money, buying items and paying rent.

Science
I haven't been able to get the kids out before it gets too hot, so we haven't been doing as much Nature Study as desired these past few weeks, but we are getting in some very short walks late in the evenings.

This week we read the most recent edition of National Geographic Kids and Iron Man's favorite part was identifying the camouflaged animals in pictures.

Extreme Weather
Our Monopoly Town game was interrupted last night...by 70+ MPH winds ripping through, knocking down trees and carrying away the trampoline. I mean, I've seen the trampoline blow over and roll around before, but it was anchored down really well this year. However, it was still flying about 5-6 feet above the ground when I saw it whiz through the apple trees. I thought it would stop when it reached the woods, but it damaged some trees and kept going. By some miracle, we still have power, and there seems to be little damage done in the particular area, though our state is in a state of emergency as hundreds of thousands in our region are without power. Please pray for these families, and the safety of the emergency workers as they work to clean up the damage and restore power.

Hulk - Tot School

Hulk is not particularly interested in really doing any work, which is FINE and actually preferred by me. He just likes the idea of doing what his brother does. So I usually just give him a few extra pieces of whatever hands-on items we're using, and he's content to sort by color, count them or stack them.

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